There is no evidence that Nathan Mayer Rothschild received news of Waterloo by pigeon and or that he thereon made a market killing. The most we can infer is that he among other individuals received news before Wellington’s official despatch and made a profit. Whether this outsider using lawful means became an insider using unlawful means appears to have developed from envy and from antisemitism.
What we do know is that Henry Wells was born on 12 December 1805, 10 years before Waterloo. He also made money from government delay by providing express mail in direct competition with the US Post. In the 1850s, he was a founder of the American Express Company and of Wells, Fargo.
Fifty years later on 12 December 1901, Guglielmo Marconi took the next step in immediacy. In Newfoundland he received the first transatlantic radio signal, the letter “S” as “…” in morse code.
Whether the insistent compaction of communication over the last two centuries has amounted to incessant noise, there is always a fallback, “the enormous, infinite scream of nature”. This inspired Edvard Munch to produce that icon of modern angst, “The Scream”. Munch was born on 12 December 1863.
